News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
I enjoyed reading your take on this.
As for point #3, is there not already a separation of church and law in the US?
To continue upon others threads. In theory, on paper. You are correct. In practice, that was left behind decades ago. Back in the 1940s the Christian Right began to coalesce. In the 70s it became a prominent voting bloc. Cut to present day and you have preachers telling their congregation who to vote for because they have a wink and a smile contract. Hurt the people we hate and we will give you power.
It's more than that - you have none other than the Church of Scientology to blame, partially. Thanks to their Operation Snow White back in the 70s, where Scientologists obtained key positions within the IRS and effectively doxxed thousands of IRS members (with the implicit threat of violence), they managed to maintain tax-free status despite operating as a political entity, and killed an entire investigation into their organization in one fell swoop. This spooked the IRS so goddamn much that it changed their entire approach to dealing with religious organizations entirely, and led to the hands-off approach that got us the Moral Majority in the 80s, and the marriage of the GOP to the American religious right.
Unfortunately, "separation of church and state" is a nice goal but leaves a lot to be desired.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a particular religion ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"). However, even that relatively narrow prohibition has been interpreted even more narrowly by conservative Supreme Court justices who only thinly veil, if at all, their favoritism to their particular religion.
Additionally, non-profit orgs are technically prohibited from endorsing candidates and campaigning. However, conservative churches and their pastors frequently give (again) thinly-veiled instructions to vote for Trump or the GOP, without repercussions.
There is, but that only prevents the government from acting as a religious organization. It doesn't prevent a group of private citizens from deciding to vote only for religious extremists, thereby filling all the lower offices with theocrats who slowly work their way up the chain until until they control the federal government. All the way they pay lip service to religious freedom until they have the numbers and authority to do away with it.